<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>All That I Know (And All That I Feel) by Fiercest</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24850684">All That I Know (And All That I Feel)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiercest/pseuds/Fiercest'>Fiercest</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Soul Eater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff, Pining, Skateboarding, Summer Romance, just because</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:07:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,818</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24850684</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiercest/pseuds/Fiercest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is home from college for the summer after a year apart. Soul doesn’t know if he can take another. </p><p>
  <i> Written for the chibi!Reverb in collaboration with Artist Aquabella888</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Maka Albarn/Soul Eater Evans</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>81</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>All That I Know (And All That I Feel)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maka is tone deaf and her hearing is poor, so she’s not really a big fan of music. Anything with loud bass and shouting works for her, but she never understood the appeal of acoustic, whispered sweetness.</p><p> </p><p>Not until she understands that it is poetry set to melody. The words to the song being sung are in iambic pentameter, which is what she notices first. A complicated melody is being weaved beneath it, by the keys of a piano. Maka yanks her curtains apart to see who’s singing. It’s a hot late august twilit evening and she hasn’t closed her window in days. Next door, their window is also open and that’s where the song is coming from.</p><p> </p><p>She leans halfway out the window to listen better. The piano is dark and weird, the voice is smooth and clear, she loves it. Settling in, she rests her cheek on her crossed arms and listens. Eventually the music stops and the player gets up, passing the window on his way to the door. He’s a boy around her age, with a shock of white hair, poor posture and clothed in a ratty band t-shirt.</p><p> </p><p>Moving trucks arrived outside weeks ago, but she’s never seen the house occupants before now. Blair, a divorcee artist-type used to live there and the bedroom across the way used to be her studio. For years, Blair would obscenely press and caress clay into the shapes of naked bodies bent into impossible positions while waving and making conversation <em>at</em> pubescent Maka—who knew that she was <em>definitely</em> too young to be interacting with the woman. But Maka liked her all the same, though Mama wouldn’t have. Mama never met Blair because Mama never lived in this house. When Mama and Papa divorced, she rescinded her custodial rights. She travelled so much for work, it wouldn’t have made sense. So Papa moved them to suburban Las Vegas and Mama sent postcards to the new address.</p><p> </p><p>Blair had been awarded an artist residency in Austin, so she had to leave. Maka would miss her. Blair promises she’ll visit, but Maka wonders if she really will. Mama has never been to this house and she promised too.</p><p> </p><p>“Soul!” someone shouts. His bedroom door is open so she can hear it. It’s a deep male voice.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah yeah, comin’!” Soul shouts back. He glances around the room and Maka hits the deck before he sees her staring like a creep.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>On Sunday Maka has an early shift at the Starbucks inside the Barnes and Noble. She took this job for the free coffee and discount books, but some days slinging lattes is the last thing she wants to be doing.</p><p> </p><p>She fulfills a promise to BlackStar and meets him at the skatepark after her shift is over.</p><p> </p><p>He’s waiting by the benches, her board in hand, deck facing away from her. She skids to a stop and peers suspiciously at it. “Oh god, what did you do.”</p><p> </p><p>“I didn’t do anything, what the hell!” He denies even as he holds the board behind his back.</p><p> </p><p>“What did you do to my board!” She shrieks. “This is the last time I let you paint anything that belongs to me, I was fine with the stickers!”</p><p> </p><p>“Listen you puny wimp, I did you a favour! I was magnanimous enough-“</p><p> </p><p>Maka can’t believe it, “Can you even spell-“</p><p> </p><p>“-to give you a BlackStar original and you’re an ungrateful cretin!”</p><p> </p><p>“What did you <em>do </em>to it?!” She shrieks, lunging to physically rip the board away.</p><p> </p><p>Unfortunately, BlackStar hit a growth spurt this summer and now he can hold it way above Maka’s head. But not Tsubaki’s. She plucks the skateboard easily out of his hands and hands it to Maka.</p><p> </p><p>She lets out an inhuman shriek of undiluted rage. The art on the bottom is an electric blue and yellow graffiti stylized signature. BlackStar emblazoned in sharpie and spray paint. “I’m gonna fuck you up,” she swears.</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck it up on the ramps dweeb.”</p><p> </p><p>“I need some new friends,” Maka proclaims, kicking BlackStar in the shin. (“OW! YOU BITCH!”) “Tsubaki, it’s me and or BlackStar. Get with the program.”</p><p> </p><p>With Tsubaki as their one-woman cheer squad they keep trying to outdo each other, jumping higher, twisting more and taking even worse skidding falls. When Maka’s so beat up, she can barely stand anymore, they compare skinned knees and BlackStar shoves his bloody elbow in her face with a victorious cheer.</p><p> </p><p>By the time Maka gets home, she’s too exhausted to shower or change. She faceplants into bed and stares out the window, where from her angle she can see the faint glow of a night light in the neighboring window and a silhouette beneath the covers.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>There are two options for getting to school. The bus or a lift with BlackStar in his vile fourth-hand Volvo. Caught between a rock and a gross place, Maka picks the bus today.</p><p> </p><p>She waits by the curb, absorbing the first rays of 7am light and listens to the minimal suburban traffic with closed eyes. There are no front lawns in Vegas, only rock yards and the stones are still cool beneath her butt. In an hour it’ll be sweltering and her skirt will be the only thing saving her from heat stroke. She’s so focused on listening to the hum of bugs and murmur of distant cars that she’s startled at the <em>clack</em> of a rock kicked across the yard.</p><p> </p><p>Her neighbor, <em>Soul</em>, kicks a rock back and forth while he paces—presumably waiting for the same bus she is.</p><p> </p><p>He isn’t paying attention to her, so she sneaks glances his way. He slouches low and shoves his hands to the bottom of his pockets for lack of anything else to do with him. His knapsack is tilted against the curb and it doesn’t seem like there’s much in it. She wants to make conversation but everything about his demeanor screams ‘<em>leave me alone’</em>.</p><p> </p><p>She waves hello anyway when the noisy bus in the distance prompts him to look up. Her wide, friendly grin is hesitantly returned with proof of purchase: a close lipped smirk.</p><p> </p><p>The bus eventually putters to a stop right in front of her. She gets on and takes the one empty seat right in the middle. She pulls one of the novels she keeps in her bag and settles in for twenty minutes of tuning out mayhem when her seat jumps.</p><p> </p><p>Her neighbor dropped into the seat beside her but keeps his eyes straight ahead. His cheek becomes the object of her stare. She’ll figure him out. But for now she turns her attention back to her book, content to sit in comfortable companionship with this stranger.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>In English, her favourite subject, her rapt attention is broken by the feeling of eyes on the back of her neck. They follow her to her next class, and the next. She’s ever aware of him and Maka is gratified that her curiosity is reciprocated.</p><p> </p><p>Soul is her shadow for the day and at the end of it, when she decides she’d rather walk than sit on a bus with a broken air conditioner, he walks home with her.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>“Yo!”</p><p> </p><p>Maka had been kneeling on the floor, arms pillowing her head on the window sill with her eyes closed. Just listening to Soul play piano next door.</p><p> </p><p>She startles and falls back.</p><p> </p><p>“What are you doing?” Soul leans half out the window, calling out to her from only five feet away. If they both leaned out and reached out their arms, the tips of their fingers would almost touch.</p><p> </p><p>Maka blushes at being caught. “Oh, uh… I was just listening to you play?”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh… you heard.”</p><p> </p><p>Maka squats low so the windowsill hides her blush and smile. From his bewildered expression he hasn’t caught on to her yet. “Is that okay? I liked it.”</p><p> </p><p>Soul scratches the back of his neck in a nervous gesture and glances around as if to avoid her gaze, then he walks left, out of sight.</p><p> </p><p><em>Good going Maka, you’ve frightened him off.</em> Her forehead thumps against the wood and she wasn’t to diiiiie. Why can’t she just be normal? But her self-flagellation is interrupted by a curious scraping noise. She looks up to see Soul dragging his keyboard stand in front of the window. He goes back for the actual keyboard, then his bench. Last, he brings a tiny amp over and sets it on his windowsill, pointed her way. Her jaw drops as he cracks his knuckles and starts to play.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>Their lives, from that moment on, were irrevocably changed.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>So maybe it’s a little pathetic, but it’s been a year and Soul’s phone home screen is still a picture of him and Maka at prom. Not that they went as dates or anything. She just sort of assumed they would all be going together as a group and that way that.</p><p> </p><p>He did buy her a corsage though. And he bribed Liz into telling him the colour of her dress so he could match his tie.</p><p> </p><p>It was red, by the way.</p><p> </p><p>The picture isn’t the professionally taken, rigidly posed one in front of a cloth backdrop. This one was taken later, when they stopped for burgers in their gowns and tuxes. Maka is forever frozen, cheek to cheek with him, stealing his fries while Tsubaki urges them to pose and smile nicely. It’s his favourite picture of himself; one of the few where he’s smiling.</p><p> </p><p>After high school, they all went their separate ways. He crossed the country to attend university in Virginia. Maka went to Texas.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“This’ll be good for us,” Maka had said, when the acceptance letters started piling up.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It had not been good for Soul.</p><p> </p><p>He wishes for Maka like starving people wish for food. He misses her beyond metaphorical measures. He’s so glad that they’ll both be in Death City for the summer; it’s basically saving his life.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>THUNK.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Soul is mid-snore when he startles awake and sitting up. <em>What the fuck?</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>Another <em>thunk.</em></p><p> </p><p>Like an old habit, he gets up and walks over to the window. He slides it up and is immediately hit in the face with a soft beanbag.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh god, I’m so sorry!” Maka cries from across the way.</p><p> </p><p>Soul sighs. “You could text me like a normal person!”</p><p> </p><p>The beanbags were a gift from before they had cellphones. They each had a set. One was black (now, faded gray), one was green. They would trade them back and forth so one never had a full set. It’s tradition. And Maka loves tradition.</p><p> </p><p>“No thanks,” she says, resting on the window sill. They share a smile. “Welcome home, Soul.”</p><p> </p><p>His brother is a pain, his year was terrible, he’s got indigestion from the flight and there is a ticking time bomb in an envelope downstairs but-</p><p> </p><p>His tiredness and grumpy mood vanish, “Welcome home, Maka.”</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>Summer sees Soul and Maka falling back together after nine months apart. They’ve hardly gone more than a day without speaking in all that time, but it’s not the same. Touch is an intrinsic part of their relationship and every time she takes his hand, she sets fire to every nerve from fingers to toes.</p><p> </p><p>It’s too hot to skate anymore, so they sprawl out in the middle of the halfpipe, the concrete sweetly burning their backs and thighs. Maka, Soul, BlackStar and Tsubaki stare at the clouds as they pass overhead, catching up on the lives that have veered in different directions.</p><p> </p><p>Soul listens to Maka talk about her new friend Crona and how she gets to see Blair all the time and he thinks of a sealed envelope on his kitchen counter.</p><p> </p><p>“It’s weird to think it’s only been a year, feels like forever,” Maka confesses.</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t agree more.</p><p> </p><p>“And there’s still three more years to go? I kind of feel like that’s not enough time to figure it all out.”</p><p> </p><p>BlackStar snorts, “Figure what out?”</p><p> </p><p>Maka smacks his stomach and it’s a skittering echo across the concrete park. “Life, y’know?”</p><p> </p><p>They all laugh. It’s hard to take that kind of talk seriously.</p><p> </p><p>“I get it though,” Soul admits. Even though he feels like three years is more than he can handle. Even though this one year has been terrible, lonely and empty.</p><p> </p><p>Maka turns her head to the side and sees him staring at her. She smiles brightly, thankful to be understood. He always understands, it’s what makes them work. He’s thankful that this year apart hasn’t changed that.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>Some things change. Some things stay the same.</p><p> </p><p>Spirit, it’s nice to know, will never evolve, no matter how far into middle age he gets.</p><p> </p><p>“Go take advantage of your seniors discount and see a movie or something if you’re bored,” Maka growls the fourth time Spirit throws open her bedroom door.</p><p> </p><p>“I will catch you in the act!” Spirit swears, pointing a finger too close to Soul’s nose.</p><p> </p><p><em>“In the act of what?”</em> Maka demands, coolly.</p><p> </p><p>They watch in stony silence as a flabbergasted Spirit finds himself trapped in a trick question. For a moment Soul wonders if he’s really going to explain that he’s hoping to catch them making out.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m watching you!” Spirit growls and slams the door behind him.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>Decisions is the primary theme of the summer. Procrastination is the secondary.</p><p> </p><p>Maka and Soul sit on stools at his kitchen counter, laptops and printouts spread around them. Maka’s debating which electives to commit to and Soul is wondering if he should even bother registering.</p><p> </p><p>If he could just make the world stop for a sec, everything will be fine.</p><p> </p><p>“Wowt dwo you-“</p><p> </p><p>“Finish chewing then talk,” Soul begs.</p><p> </p><p>Maka laughs and chews baby carrot with a dainty hand over her mouth and swallows. “What do you think about anthropology, you took one at Virginia this semester right?”</p><p> </p><p>Oh yeah, he did. “Way more work than you think it’s going to be.”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t mind if it’s hard work, Soul! I care if it was interesting.”</p><p> </p><p>Of course. “Bookwork.”</p><p> </p><p>“Shut up!” she tries to shove him and accidentally spills his orange juice all over his papers. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry!” She clambers around the island to sop up the juice with some paper towels and dabs at the ruined paper. She checks underneath and finds a ruined stack of mail.</p><p> </p><p>Oh shit. Oh no.</p><p> </p><p>“Soul…”</p><p> </p><p>Fuck. He forgot. He completely forgot. He meant to move it. He meant to read it. He meant to chuck it in the bin unread.</p><p> </p><p>“Soul, what is this?”</p><p> </p><p>He needs a new identity. A new name. He needs to hop on a plan to Virginia, right now and never return because this right here, might actually be life ending.</p><p> </p><p>Austin University’s seal is on the corner of the envelope. His name is on the address section. It could only be one thing, but Maka’s eyes are an imploring, soft seafoam and what’s a guy to do? “I requested a transfer.”</p><p> </p><p>“To my school?”</p><p> </p><p>He nods and can’t hold her gaze; it finds his feet instead. This is so embarrassing and uncool. She’s going to think he’s such a stalker. She said it would be good for them to be apart. It was good for <em>her.</em></p><p> </p><p>Maka turns on her heel and for a moment he thinks she’s storming out of his creepy creepy life. But then she opens a drawer, pulls out a butterknife and hands it and the sopping letter to him. He shifts his gaze back and forth between her and the proffered objects.</p><p> </p><p>Delicately, he takes them from her hands and opens the letter.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Dear Solomon Ethan Evans, </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>We are pleased to congratulate you on your successful transfer into the faculty of-</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>“I got in,” he breathes.</p><p> </p><p>“You did?” he glances up and before her can say anything else, Maka has thrown her arms around him.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh my god!” she shrieks.</p><p> </p><p>She seems happy, but he needs to be sure. “You’re okay with this?”</p><p> </p><p>“Of course I’m okay with this!” Maka exclaims, “Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?”</p><p> </p><p>“What about everything you said about figuring out who we are apart? And making new friends?”</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck that. I like my old friend. Let’s keep each other.”</p><p> </p><p>“I literally can’t function without you,” <em>oh no, coming on wayyy too strong. Pull it back!! </em>He tightens his grip and tucks his face into her neck. He wants to say ‘missed you too’ but what comes out instead is, “Love you too.”</p><p> </p><p>That takes a whole minute for both to process and reboot, but when they do, neither seems to know what to say.</p><p> </p><p>Like she always has, Maka takes the lead. She yanks him down by the neck and crashes their lips together.</p><p> </p><p>Fuck everything else, this summer can last as long as it wants.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>